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Monday, July 14, 2014

Biochar - Creating A Coral Reef In Your Garden

One of the cool characteristics of a tropical coral reef is the huge surface area that hosts many living sea creatures and a whole ecosystem.

Did you know you can build a coral reef "like" structure in your garden by using pyrogenic carbon.

What is pyrogenic carbon?

Pyrogenic carbon or biochar is what is left after biomass is subject to high temperature and everything but the carbon is driven off. This is how charcoal is made. Wood is cooked at high temperature without the presence of oxygen driving off the sap, water and volatile turpentine.
You can do this yourself or find a source to buy biochar.

The cool thing is because of the original plant matrix the biochar has a huge surface area. A gram of bichar can have as much surface area as a foot ball field.

This is where I make the analogy between biochar and the coral reef.

So if you want to build a "soil reef" in your garden. Try biochar.

Brian and Reed have been experimenting with making biochar from sustainable wood on our farm.
We have used it for cooking and mostly for soil improvement.